It’s a question on many tech professionals’ minds: are the massive tech layoffs of 2023 finally behind us?
If you work in tech, you’re painfully aware of how some of the biggest companies in tech spent the end of 2022 and the first quarter of this year cutting tens of thousands of workers. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Dell, Salesforce, Uber, IBM, Twitter, Cisco, and others all cut teams, ended projects, and announced new strategies centered around “efficiency.” (And that’s before we talk about the sudden urge of many tech CEOs to get remote employees back to the office.)
The reasons behind these cuts were often exclusive to Big Tech. During the pandemic, many of these tech giants earned outsized profits as homebound workers and remote offices spent enormous amounts of money on everything from e-commerce to cloud services. But demand for many of these products slackened near the end of 2022, and executives everywhere began to fear an economic slowdown in the near future.
That was enough to kick off the massive layoff rounds at many tech giants, with other companies following suit. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the resulting panic also impacted the funding of many tech startups, triggering further cuts.
In other words, it was an unnerving start to the year. But have things evened out? TechCrunch recently declared that the tech industry has reached the “pruning phase” of layoffs, with companies much more judicious about their cuts.
It’s true that companies are continuing to cut—Amazon, Microsoft, Robinhood and Uber most recently. But we’re not seeing a massive bloodletting: according to crowdsourced data from layoffs.fyi, overall layoffs have steadily declined through the first six months of the year. In January, the website reported that 89,554 tech employees had lost their jobs; in June, the number was 10,524.
The tech unemployment rate also hit 2.3 percent in June, a small but notable increase from May. With demand strong for tech specialists of all types, most companies are looking to hire—and they’re more than willing to pay for top talent. Even if cuts continue in tech, other industries (including retail, manufacturing, and defense) very much need all kinds of tech professionals.
